Female Bikers in India.
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Padma Rao, one of the few female bikers at India Bike Week, India
When you think of a girl on a bike, you think of her riding pillion. Biking is a male preserve where boys use their bikes to assert their masculinity. They have their peculiar mannerisms, their boy talk and adventures that one man can share only with another man.
But entering this cozy boy’s club are few girls who are not content on sitting behind the boys to make them look pretty. They have their own bikes- just as big, heavy and menacing. The girls go on long cross- country tours just like the boys and make all the heads turn at the traffic signal in the cities.
Labadhi Shah from Gujrat on her Harley, Goa
“ A biker is a biker. There is no such thing as a male biker or a female biker. I don’t like exclusive clubs. I ride my bike on weekends with a group of friends who are mostly male but I am just one of them”, says Padma Rao, 27 a PR executive from Mumbai. She has been riding her bike in Mumbai since the last three years. Her love for cycling she says led her to biking.
But female bikers remain a minority as is evidenced at the annual India Bike Week held in Goa. Only a handful of female bikers show up among a huge jamboree of male bikers. But those that do, match the men in both the machines as well as riding prowess.
Singer Anushka Manchanda at India Bike Week, Goa
Labadhi Shah, 30 rode for Goa’s biking rendezvous this year on her Harley Davidson all the way from Navsari in Gujarat, covering a distance of over 900 kilometers one way. “There is nothing that a man can do that a woman cant. I want to encourage more women to ride”, she says. She dismisses the argument that these bikes are too heavy for woman. “ Its not about the weight of the bikes . Its all about the passion”, she says.
A girl on a two wheeler attracts attention anywhere in India. But a girl on a leviathan of a bike like Harley leaves everyone google-eyed at the signal. The usual tendency to taunt or race is replaced by a sense of inadequacy.
Sonia Jain an avid Biker from Delhi
Singer Sukhmani Malik, who rides a Harley says she is used to the attention now. “ I don’t notice the attention anymore. I am a singer and I am used to being on stage and being looked at. So I don’t notice it that much on the streets”, she says.
However there are some unpleasant incidents that female bikers sometimes face. “ I had to call the cops when a male biker who was following me , tried to make me fall off my bike at a crowded stretch in New Delhi”, says Ria Dhabas , 21 a Harley girl. She got her bike as a birthday present when she turned 20.
Singer Sukhmani Malik from Chandigarh on her Harley
“ There are usually two types of reactions you get from men on the road. One is appreciation. When they gives you a thumbs up. The second is where men try to race you or try stunts in front of you”, she says.
Some unpleasant experiences notwithstanding, the girl bikers are here to stay and push the envelop of riding. Sheetal Bidaye, 38 has a Limca Record for being the first female to ride her bike to the highest mountain pass in the world. “ This was in Ladakh when I crossed the Masimik La pass solo in 2010”, she says. In Mumbai where she lives she also teaches other girls how to ride a bike.
Ria Dabas got a Harley for her 20th birthday